TSB waives overdraft fees and interest charges for small business customers

posted onApr. 26, 2018 at 8:21 am

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TSB has announced it will be waiving all overdraft and interest fees for all its retail and small business customers for the month, as it looks to start making amends for troubles customers have faced since a weekend upgrade.

Last weekend, TSB moved its 5m customers and their 1.3bn records to a new banking platform, but customers have faced problems accessing their accounts throughout this week.

The news came with a trading update for the bank and its owner Banco Sabadell. For the first quarter of 2018, Sabadell's net profit had risen by a third to €259.3m.

TSB advanced £1.2bn of new mortgage loans in the first quarter of 2018, "building on the £7bn advanced in 2017". Total customer lending had dipped slightly to £30.8bn due to the impact of the early return of the mortgage enhancement, and TSB also citing the continued roll-off of the Whistletree portfolio.

Management profit before tax was up by 5.4 per cent year-on-year to £29.5m.

TSB chief executive Paul Pester has apologised for the upgrade troubles, saying the move to its new banking platform last weekend has made for "an incredibly bumpy" landing for customers.

He said:

The challenge we are facing at the moment is that while we know its working, one of the main ways that our customers see everything is working – through our internet banking and mobile app – isnt functioning as well as it should be, and I can appreciate how frustrating this must be for our customers.

Of course, customers can rest assured that no one will be left out of pocket as a result of these problems. To begin to put things right, we will be waiving all overdraft fees and interest charges for all of our retail and small business customers for April.

He added: "We have achieved a tremendous amount in the past four years in building TSB. We clearly have some issues were dealing with but we will come out the other side. The way we deal with every single one of our frustrated customers as quickly as possible will define TSB – both now and in 10, in 15 and in 20 years to come as we continue on our mission to bring more competition to UK banking."

TSB has since said it understands that for the vast majority of customers "everything is running smoothly", but as it is bringing up its services gradually, it means that some customers will have to wait a while to get access.